The subject matter chosen for this PhD, learning within a Product Development (PD) working
practice, might give rise to wonder given that I have a theoretical education within supply
chain management, achieved practical experience as senior supply chain manager and finally,
conducted a great many lectures dealing with supply chain management. Offhand, it may
seem an odd choice, but my practical experience, briefly illustrated in the below, triggered the
decision to study learning within a PD working practice.
PD implies design of components and clarifications of the assembly process. A side effect
of these activities is a routing, which establishes the supply chain; that is, the total journey,
which all components must undertake before the product is saleable. Hence, seen from the
perspective of the operation, the supply chain to be managed throughout the life cycle of the
product is created during the PD phase. Changing a supply chain later on is possible, but it
requires a significant effort. When managing a supply chain area, in which a large part of the
products had a life cycle of more than 10 years, I realised the critical importance of influencing
the PD process. Thus, employees from the supply chain department were often engaged in
intense exchanges of views with the PD engineers and substantial resources were devoted to
improving the awareness of supply chain considerations during the PD process. Nevertheless,
in my firm conviction, these efforts only managed to exert minor influence and consequently,
the established supply chains were difficult to handle.
Ever since then, I have wondered why we were unsuccessful in influencing the supply
chain of a new product. The involved supply chain engineers had a highly theoretical background
as well as practical experience, but it was not possible to initiate learning among the
PD engineers as regards the establishment of a more suitable supply chain.